


Embers

by sabbig



Series: Amy & Danse [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabbig/pseuds/sabbig
Summary: She'd loved that house.





	Embers

Sanctuary Hills was always such a mixed bag for her. 

It felt like home, but it was also so nauseating. 

It was something about that house. She knew Danse was just gearing up to ask her questions about it any time now. The first few times she'd brought him here, into her biggest settlement, he'd been too entranced with the walls and the fortifications and the guard rotation that she and Preston had set up to notice the immaculate, untouched, husk of her old home. 

But now they lived here, and the damned thing was dogging her. 

She'd loved that house. The state of the floors that she and Nate had sweated and cussed to install themselves made her want to weep. Someone had just taken the whole damned bed. There wasn't a single tube of chapstick left in the bathroom cabinets. The mold growing on the walls she'd painted left her with a festering rage that was heightened in growing numbers of spots around Boston. The elementary school where they would have enrolled Shaun. The city administration building where they'd signed their marriage license. Her fucking house. 

But here, when sleep wouldn't stay with her, she'd find herself standing outside the door of the new, postwar shack of a building she'd scrabbled together for herself, directly across from her old house. 

Staring. 

Sometimes she'd manage to get a cigarette into her hand before the fugue state took over. Sometimes she'd manage to put on a jacket before wandering out into the street in the cold. 

The past was such a mixed bag for her. 

"Amy?" 

Danse's voice triggered just enough adrenaline to jolt through her to counter the weight of all of the years that fell between her and what used to lie across the street. 

"Yeah." She replied. It wasn't… an appropriate response, but it was all that was going to happen right now. 

When the itching in her legs and the back of her mind had grown too strong, she'd tried to crawl out of their shared bed tenderly enough not to wake him, but he slept as poorly as she did most nights. 

"This doesn't seem like your usual time for a cigarette." 

"Yeah." She agreed. He cleared his throat.  
  
"You're cold." He said, coming to stand behind her.

Tonight wasn't one of the nights that she managed the jacket. 

His hands were outright hot on her biceps as he turned her to face him. She must have been out here longer than she thought. At least the nights were coming out of the bitter cold of winter. 

He still had lines on his face from the creases of the pillow. He frowned and walked back into her shack and she turned back to stare at her damned house. She scoffed; they thought the roof was getting bad back then. They'd had no idea what 200 years of bullshit could accomplish. 

There was a blanket and a set of warm arms suddenly draped around her. 

"This was your house, wasn't it?" 

"Yeah." 

"Why did you move in right across the street from it?" 

"I see it in my dreams anyways. I might as well face the reality of it so it doesn't… I don't know." Doesn't grow worse. Doesn't turn into a looming monster of decay and futility. Doesn't continue to mock her with a clownish face of rotting windows and doors. 

It's just stuff, she chanted in her mind. It's just stuff. 

"Does it help?" He asked.

"Not sure." She replied. That shook her away from the mildew that had completely eaten the siding. 

She knew about the dreams that haunted him too. He didn't have much that he could stare down to remind him of the reality. A second set of holotags hung against his chest. They gave him little to keep the truth from warping into a gaping maw of misery. 

"Do you leave it there as a reminder?" 

"It's more like… like a bruise." She answered. "I'm not ready to touch it. Or burn it down." 

"You shouldn't burn it." He said, glancing around everything they'd built around her old neighborhood. New houses had been built on the concrete foundations of the old. Sturdy walls of remnants circled them. Generators hummed in the far edge of the town. Traders wandered in and out daily. 

"If you want to tear it down, think of what else you could do with the materials." 

"My house is scrap, huh?" 

"Your house… it could become anything you want. Anything you need here. There's no need to keep it here, like this, if it doesn't help." 

"Can I ask you something?" 

"Always." 

"Does having Cutler's tags help?" 

"Sometimes." 

She'd cried when she'd first come into this world. Cried from the shock of it. The freshness of the ruin. But it had gotten older. There was less and less that hit her as hard as this. But she didn't feel the tears starting tonight. Just the heavy dread of what she knew she needed to do. 

Danse's arms still waiting around her didn't make it easier. The steady cadence of his breath near her ear didn't give her the answers. But the memory of him taking that second set of holotags out of a locker in his old room on the Prydwen and putting them on seemed to help her decide that she couldn't leave things like this.

She dropped the empty butt of her cigarette and stamped the embers out. His big hands were warm and dry when she slipped her fingers around them.

"Do you think you can go back to sleep?" 

"If you can." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danse woke up to the creak of ancient wood and steel cracking apart, and the particular whine of a Mr. Handy's circular saw attachment. 

The sun had just lightened the sky, and had yet to make its way completely over the walls. He found a flannel on the floor and made his way outside. 

Shaun was already sitting on the dirt against the wall of the house outside, a box of Dandy Boy Apples in his hands. He looked blearily up at Danse. The synth boy wasn't lazy, but it was also much earlier than anyone in Sanctuary usually began any work. 

"Hi." 

"Hi." He returned and sat down next to him. 

"Mom and Mr. Sturges said they're going to build a school. I thought there was already one in Diamond City." 

"I guess they're going to make another one." 

"Do you want some apples?" 

"Thanks." 

He rested his back against the wall of their house, and cast his eyes over Amy. She and Codsworth were on top of the roof of her old house, crowbar and saw dismantling whatever remained and tossing it down to a tarp where Sturges was sorting what they tossed down. 

"Do you think she's going to tear down the whole house?" 

"Yes." 

"Do you know why she saved this one for last?" 

Danse wasn't ready to answer that one. 'Ask your mother' didn't seem right for this particular question. Neither did the outright lie of a 'no'. 

"It's complicated." 

"How? Is that house special? Like the vaults? Does it have computers inside? Or a secret?" 

"No, not that kind of complicated. More like, complicated memories." 

Sean didn't immediately have an question to follow that up. He just stared at the house. 

"Is that mom's old house? From before? Her and my dad?" 

"Right." 

"Oh." He sat down his box of apples, and looked at Danse. "Should we help?" 

"Probably." Danse couldn't help but smile. "Do you think you could start by making coffee for everyone?" 

"Okay." 

"Do you remember how to do it?" 

"Um. I remember how to start the water, but could you help me with how much coffee to put in?" 

"Okay." He saw Amy make her way down the ladder and towards them. "I'll be in in a minute to help you." Shaun nodded, and shuffled inside. 

She grabbed his arm and reached up to kiss him. She smelled like another cigarette, but she was smiling. She looked like she'd gotten enough sleep. 

"I love you." She said. 

"I love you, too." He replied. "Are you okay?" 

She nodded. 

"I asked Shaun to make us coffee." 

"Good kid." She grinned. 

"I heard it's going to become a school." 

"There's a few babies here already." She shrugged. 

"It's a good idea." 

"You were right. It could be anything I want. I want it to be something hopeful."


End file.
